The Meadow and the Misread is about the intersection of memory and self, the way language is used to compartmentalize the whole pulsing blur of experience into distinct parts, and how the boundary between interior and exterior--self and other--is an illusion of memory and language. It also poses a question about agency, namely whether we can act upon the world, or if it only seems that way because we are stuck inside ourselves. In other words: Do we happen? Or does everything happen to us? Perhaps, by some reading, this is X Parke's central obstacle; she is grappling with the problem of self, of where she ends and the rest of the universe begins. She is wrestling with the perimeters of the present by investigating the parameters of the past. Or vice versa. She is parsing the blur of experience for footholds the only way she knows how: by naming its parts. She is unsure if she is acting upon the world, or if she is being acted upon.